Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research 6(2), (July, 2018) 97-115 97 Content list available at http://ijltr.urmia.ac.ir Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research Urmia University A Narrative Study of In-service EAP Teachers’ Cognition on Language Teacher Role Identities Mahmood Reza Atai a, *, Esmat Babaii a, Behruz Lotfi Gaskaree b a Kharazmi University, Iran b University of Zabol, Iran A B S T R A C T The present exploratory study probed Iranian in-service EAP teachers’ cognitions on language teacher role identities. Life history narratives and teaching philosophy statements were employed to collect qualitative data from nine Iranian in-service EAP teachers at one of the state universities in Iran. The data included the teachers’ descriptions of their teaching philosophies as well as their evaluations and interpretations of their prior teachers’ ways of being language teachers. Inductive analysis of the data allowed the researchers to identify Eight role identities including ‘teachers as creators and users of learning opportunities’; ‘teachers as selectors and users of teaching/learning materials’; ‘teachers as assessors and evaluators’; ‘teachers as researchers’; ‘teachers as realizers and facilitators of the development of learners' (full) potentials’; ‘teachers as observers of ethicality’; ‘teachers as learners’; and, ‘teachers as teacher educators’. In addition to providing a typology of teacher role identities that Iranian language teachers identify with, the study might promise some implications for language teacher education and teacher education research. Keywo rds: in-service EAP teachers; life history; role identity; teacher cognition; teaching philosophy statement © Urmia University Press A R T I C L E H I S T O R Y Received: 18 Oct. 2017 Revised version received: 16 Jan. 2018 Accepted: 15 June 2018 Available online: 1 July 2018 * Corresponding author: University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran Email address: [email protected] © Urmia University Press 10.30466 /ijltr.2018.120562 98 M. Atai, E. Babaii & B. Lotfi Gaskaree/A narrative study of … Introduction Identity has been recognized as an important factor in SLA research (Norton, 2013; Tajeddin & Adeh (2016); Vasilopoulos, 2013). Recognizing teachers as key to the success of language education and acknowledging the role of their personal values, assumptions and prior experiences in their professional development (Richards, 2008), researchers began to consider the study of teacher cognition (Borg, 2003; Golombek & Doran, 2014) and identity (Singh & Richards, 2006) high in the agenda. Relying on their own cognitions on teaching, learning and being a teacher, teachers construct their professional identities and theories of teaching (Freeman & Johnson, 1998). Accordingly, teacher development was conceptualized “as the appropriation and resistance to skills and knowledge for the purpose of remaking identity” (Singh & Richards, 2006, p. 153). Teacher cognition research seeks to understand and demonstrate “who” teachers are and “what they already know, and what they actually do when they teach” (Graves, 2009, p. 117). Similarly, teacher professional identity research focuses on identifying how teachers conceptualize their professional roles (Lasky, 2005) and see themselves as teachers (Burns & Richards, 2009). Both teacher cognition and identity studies help researchers gain insights into teachers’ “ideas of ‘how to be’, ‘how to act’, and ‘how to understand’ their work and their place in society” (Sachs, 2005, p. 15). Thus, as Miller (2009) highlights, teachers’ cognitions cannot be separated from their identities. Despite the contribution of teacher cognition (Johnson, 2006) and identity research (Martal & Kanunen, 2014) to second language teacher education, there is only scanty attention to these studies in Iranian L2 context. Atai and Fatahi-Majd (2014), Atai and Khazaee (2014) and Abednia (2012) are the few studies investigating teacher cognition and/or identity. Moreover, despite the advantage of narrative inquiry in investigating teacher identity (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2004; Higgins & Sandhu, 2014), there is a lack of narrative studies in these research areas, in general (Liu & Xu, 2011), and in Iranian context, in particular. The present study drew on narrative inquiry to investigate Iranian in-service teachers’ cognitions on being a language teacher. The study, thus, aimed to investigate how language teachers describe their ways and identify a typology of role identities teachers prioritize accordingly. Language Teacher Cognition and Identity Teacher cognition is concerned with the “the unobservable dimension of teaching- teachers' mental lives” (Borg, 2009, p. 163) and is defined as “what language teachers think, know, believe, and do” (Borg, 2003, p. 8). Golombek (2014, p. 103) focusing on the interaction between cognition and emotion argues that this definition should include what teachers feel about their knowledge, assumptions and practices, as well. According to Richards teacher cognition encompasses “the mental lives of teachers, how these are formed, what they consist of, and how teachers’ beliefs, thoughts and thinking processes shape their understanding of teaching and their classroom practices” (2008, p. 166). Identity is defined by Danielewicz (2001, p. 10) as “our understanding of who we are and who we think other people are.” Similarly, Burns and Richards (2009, p. 5) define teacher identity as “how individuals see themselves and how they enact their roles within different settings”. Although there is not much consensus on the concept of teacher identity, scholars agree on its importance (Beijard, 2004). In this study, teacher identity refers to the in-service teachers’ understanding of “what it means to be a language teacher” (Singh & Richards, 2006, p. 168) and how they conceptualize teacher roles, qualifications and commitments. Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research 6(2), (July, 2018) 97-115 99 Narrative analysis promises advantages to teacher cognition (Bell, 2002) and identity studies (Beijard, 2004; Søreide, 2006). Narrative inquiry enables researchers to effectively “uncover the personal and social meanings” teachers hold (Higgins & Sandhu, 2014, p. 50). Furthermore, teachers’ own stories about their learning experiences can illustrate their “underlying insights and assumptions” (Bell, 2002, p. 208) and help their “deeply hidden assumptions to surface” (p. 209). Theoretical Approach Conceptually, the study draws on different conceptualizations of teacher identity such as claimed versus assigned identity (Varghese, Morgan, Johnston, & Johnson, 2005), positioning theory (Søreide, 2006) and role identity (Farrell, 2011). Positioning theory “examines the types of subject positions, or subjectivities, that people assume in telling stories” (Higgins & Sandhu, 2014, p. 50). Accordingly, subject positions are used by teachers “as narrative resources to position themselves as teachers” (Søreide, 2006, p. 528). According to Farrell, “Teacher role identity includes teacher beliefs, values, and emotions about many aspects of teaching and being a teacher” (Farrel, 2011, p. 54). Through narratives, the teachers find the opportunity to provide evaluation and descriptions of their prior teachers’ roles and qualifications as well as negotiate their own identities (Higgins & Sandhu, 2014). In other words, the teachers are likely to make their own views of being a teacher understood through “identification with or rejection of” their prior teachers’ ways of being a teacher (Søreide, 2006, p. 529). As teacher role identities are actualized through a number of activities and conditions teachers use/create in their teaching practices, it is reasonable to explore the activities and conditions they identify as essential for fulfilling each role identity. Guided by the assumption that the stories teachers narrate are “shaped by their own knowledges, values, feelings, and purposes” (Beijard, 2004, p. 21), this paper explored language teachers’ cognitions on teacher role identities. Teacher role identity includes professional roles, responsibilities and qualifications that the participating teachers prioritize in their life-history narratives as well as teaching philosophy statements. Review of the Related Literature The literature on language teacher identity shows that the studies cluster around a number of themes. Focusing on the linguistic background of teachers, a group of studies addressed the differences between professional identities of native and nonnative speaker teachers (e.g., Park, 2012). The second line of teacher identity studies probed teachers’ professional identities in relation with the features of their social identity including race, gender, ethnicity and class (e.g., Simon-Maeda, 2004). The third group examined, the process of teachers’ identity (re)construction. Many of these studies explored the development and negotiation of identities by language teachers in the contexts where they needed to reconstruct their identities (Liu & Xu, 2011; Tsui, 2007). Some examined the effects of different activities and courses on teachers’ identity formation (e.g., Abednia, 2012; Franzak, 2002; Maclean & White, 2007). A sub-group of these studies also addressed the role of different factors on teacher identity construction such as context (e.g., Smagorinsky, Cook, Moore, Jackson & Fry, 2004) and prior experiences (e.g., Olsen, 2008, for a comprehensive review of research on teacher identity see Izadinia (2013) and for language teacher identity